Arabic is a Semitic language. See Arabic language for more information on the language in general. This article describes the grammar of Classical Arabic.
Due to the rapid expansion of Islam in the 8th century, many people learned Arabic as a lingua franca. For this reason, the earliest grammatical treatises on Arabic are often written by non-native speakers.
The earliest grammarian who is known to us is #endnote_SV]
The Arabic participle is a verbal noun formed from one of the derived verbal stems. E.g. muʿallimun 'teacher' is the active participle to stem II. of the root ʿ-l-m ('know').
The passive participle to Stem I is mafʿūlun
Stems II-X take prefix mu- and nominal endings (e.g. II. mu-faʿʿil-un.)
Infinitive
There is a second type of verbal noun besides the participle that is referred to as 'infinitive' because it often translates to infinitive constructions in Indo-European languages. It is strictly speaking not an infinitive, it would be more correct to speak of "verbal noun I" and "verbal noun II", but the name infinitive is too widespread to abandon it. It is popularly referred to as "masdar".
infinitive formation to stem I is irregular.
the infinitive to stem II is tafʿīlun.
stems III-X simply take nominal endings (for stem III, the passive participle is often substituted). As for instance, the stem ista`mal, by simply taking nominal endings, becomes isti`maal.
For example: taʾrīḫun 'date, history' is the infinitive to stem II. of ʾ-r-ḫ ('date').
Syntax
In Arabic, word order is less important than in English, and more stylistic than semantic. Verbs often start sentences and sometimes come after the subject.
The first one is classified as the default word order. The second one is used when putting greater attention to the subject, this usually happens when the answer to the question is the subject. It is often claimed that in the several vernaculars the default word order is
